Bright Spark

by Gavin Smith

  Marjorie had neglected to mention to Slowey that she hadn’t permitted the female Scenes of Crime Officer to meet either Tony or Jeremy. Once it had been explained to her that Jeremy was an aggressive child in a man’s body and Tony was virtually immobile and about to breathe his last, the woman had promptly agreed that their samples weren’t crucial at that stage in the enquiry. If Slowey noticed how novel the process was to Jeremy, he didn’t show it.

  “Brilliant. Thank you both,” said Slowey, neatly stacking the samples and slipping them into his folder. “Marjorie, is your husband available?”

  “I’m afraid he’s very poorly.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Anthony is most unwell. It’s his lungs. He needs to rest; we can’t risk tiring him. He may not have long.” She let the words hang. “Unless of course it’s strictly necessary.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. Of course I won’t disturb him. Don’t worry about it. As I said, it’s really just a matter of routine.”

  Was he really deferring to her? Or was he as relieved as he seemed to be? Did his unblinking glibness suggest he’d been spared an awkward chore when he knew perfectly well that Anthony was the one person in this house who certainly didn’t and couldn’t have anything to do with the fire.

  “Thank you for being so understanding.”

  “Not at all. I appreciate your being so cooperative. It’s our fault we lost your samples, after all.” What did he want now? “There is just one more thing I need before I go.”

  “Oh, really. More tea, then?”

  She stood and switched on the kettle, placing herself within easy reach of the iron skillet. Her heart sparked with a jolting current that could only be earthed if she grabbed the pan and applied it to the policeman’s head. Just one more thing? Didn’t that always precede the unmasking of the killer in those hoary old crime dramas on daytime TV? Might she be cornered? She squirmed, fussing with teabags and opening yet another packet of biscuits to dissipate some of the nervous energy. She had to accept she was trapped. She was not a killer and would not lash out, but she would think of something. Other people depended on her.

  “Yes, why not?”

  She smiled, damning him to hell. He wasn’t planning to leave any time soon. But then again, he couldn’t be planning to cuff her and drag her away, unless he was playing a long and patient game with her. Perhaps he was waiting until the kettle full of boiling water was out of her reach before he pinned her to the floor and ratcheted the cuffs onto her bony wrists. What would he say? Would he gloat? Would he condemn? Would he remain impassive, inured to human weakness?

  “Are you sure? You look tired. I can always come back…”

  “No, no. We want to help in any way we can. It was a terrible, terrible thing to happen to those kiddies. And there’s the damage to our house too.”

  “Well I certainly appreciate it. Now then, I will need to take a statement from Jeremy…..

  “You don’t need that. I can give you all the information you…..”

  “And that’s brilliant, but I will need to speak to him by himself, as soon as possible. It has to go on the record, you see, and he has to be speaking as independently as possible.”

  “But I won’t allow it,” she declared, strident for an instant then emollient again. “I mean surely we can’t do it here; after all, Jeremy has certain needs.”

  “Of course, of course. I’m sorry, I should have made myself clearer.” The policeman smiled, unruffled. “When I said ‘I will need to speak to him’, I meant that I will set up the special interview process. He’ll be interviewed on video by a specialist officer in the presence of an appropriate adult independent of the police. It will take a day or two to set up.”

  “Polite policeman. No tie. Vulnerable Witness Interview or VWI,” interrupted Jeremy. “SJ says ‘special’ is a euphemism for wacky and obnoxious.”

  “And if Sharon were here, Jeremy, she’d tell you to mind your manners,” scolded Marjorie.

  “Minding manners, muzzled, zipped, keeping mum.”

  “So, we’ll give you a ring about the VWI, to give it its right name,” said Slowey.

  “Yes, yes, please do.” She looked for a better or safer answer but found none.

  “And finally, I just need to finish your statement. I know I took some notes from you in the car but I just need to make it formal.” He had arrayed the statement paper on the table with what might have been his original notes propped nearby, legible to him but not to her. His pen hovered at the first line, poised. “Hope that’s ok, Marjorie.”

  “Of course. I only want to help.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The swan waddled up the guano-spattered slipway with the gait of a sumo wrestler, all of its grace left behind in the water. It busied itself with preening, sieving and straightening its primary flight feathers, then momentarily unfolded its man-size wingspan, beating clean air into its down, flexing its hollow bones and thick muscles. Satisfied with its own magnificence, it cocked its head and craned its neck as a terrier dragging on a lead yapped and lunged at it. Standing square and looming large, it seemed to consider seizing the nuisance in its beak, dragging it into the water and drowning it. Watchfully, it returned to its endless preening as the irritation was dragged away.

  “I know how he feels,” said Tomkins, wrapping his jaw around a chicken burger, his elbows propped on the plastic table next to the burger joint’s window with its view of Brayford Wharf. “Just minding your own business, standing around looking handsome, and some aggressive little runt always wants to ruffle your feathers.”

  “Thanks for meeting me,” said Harkness.

  “No problem. You’re buying me lunch. Didn’t recognise you without a cheap suit for a minute. Them hands look sore.”

  “They are. About Braxton....”

  “Who?”

  “Kevin Braxton. You interviewed him about ten days ago.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve slept since, mind.” Tomkins took a long gulp from his fizzy drink and wiped the sweat from his brow. Despite the sticky heat, he’d worn a fleece to cover his uniform shirt. “We asked him about your man. Your dead man as it turns out. We were disappointed. You just disappeared. No cushy job for us.”

  “Couldn’t be avoided. What did he say?”

  “Steady on. Why all this cloak and dagger stuff? Aren’t you off on the sick?”

  “I am. Still my case though.”

  “DI doesn’t think so. Felt compelled to ask his opinion. We got nervous, to be honest. What with the body count climbing hour by hour.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Not that he was interested. Nobody was. And we couldn’t very well bother you.”

  “Come on. What did he say? Put me out of my misery.”

  “The DI said he was grateful we’d kept him informed and that it was a first class piece of police work. Told us to note down anything relevant and feed it into the enquiry room.”

  “Not the boss. Braxton.”

  “He said what we needed him to say but no more than that. I’ve known him on and off for years. Always cocky, very slappable, either goes ‘no comment’ or argues just to pass the time. But this time, admitted affray, apologised for snotting the cop and offending the nurses, basically held his hands up. We did have him bang to rights but that doesn’t usually matter to him. So we charged him. Stuck the file in. Coming to a court near you soon.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Sorry, almost forgot.” Tomkins swallowed a hunk of his burger. “Got a bit prickly when we asked him about Firth. On the fifth time of asking, he said Firth had fucked up a business connection, it was nowt to do with anyone else and that’s all he was saying. And that’s all we got.”

  “What’s his recent form? Braxton, I mean.”

  “Public order. Low value commercial burglary. Intelligence links him with drugs supply but he’s only ever been done for possession. So far.”

  “Business connection, eh? Could mean anyt
hing.”

  “Maybe. But Braxton being nice and polite is a first. That makes me suspicious. That and the fact that his solicitor said nothing, even when I was leaning on him hard. I don’t know. Maybe someone had a word with him.”

  “Which lawyer?”

  “Snelling.”

  “Of course.” Harkness stood and slipped his sunglasses on. “Thanks Tommo. You’re a star.”

  “I see. Got what you want so you’re leaving. No soft words. No cuddling. It’s true what they say about you.”

  “Every word of it.”

  “I’m running out of excuses to be out of the office,” grumbled Slowey, propping his bare feet on Harkness’s garden table, allowing the sluggish breeze to cool them while he pushed his shoes and socks into the shade.

  “Tell them you’ve got an ailing auntie,” said Harkness, his own sandaled feet propped on the other side of the table.

  “Ah, Bunburying.”

  “Come again?”

  “From ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.”

  “Ernest who?”

  “They’ll give any philistine stripes these days. Oscar Wilde came up with it. It means leading a double life. Pretending to have a sick auntie you have to keep visiting at short notice. You know, the kind who hovers at death’s door for years on end. The kind who can be counted on to have a relapse whenever you want to get out of the office or shag around behind your lovely, loyal girlfriend’s back.”

  “Thanks for the English lesson. You need to learn your place, constable.”

  “You read the case file I pretty much stole for you, Sergeant?”

  “Every word. Twice. Also bought lunch for someone. Interesting news. But yours first. What did you make of Marjorie this time?”

  “Frightened. Frightening.”

  Slowey rasped the back of a hand against the itching stubble on his chin. He started when the back of his hand came back plastered with a dozen black flecks that twitched on his flesh like iron filings in a magnetic field.

  “Black fly season,” said Harkness. “Not your stubble falling out. Little buggers get everywhere.”

  Slowey drew his hand closer and inspected the bugs. Whenever the summer broiled and drew close, the approaching pressure front would squeeze them out of the air, giving black, crawling form to the damnable itch of the heat.

  “I was about to say,” Slowey continued, wiping his hand and his face clean with one of his endless supply of handkerchiefs, “I went in with an open mind. But that can’t be true otherwise I wouldn’t have been there at all. And I wouldn’t have teased her the way I did.”

  “Come on, get off the fence.”

  “Well, I took her by surprise. So she made me stand outside while she dived back in to prime Jeremy. Might be innocent. Might not. Either way, there was some screeching and a bit of loud whispering and he kept letting me know he wasn’t allowed to tell me anything. Which made me think he wanted to. Or he didn’t care either way but needed me to see how well he could follow instructions. I just don’t know.

  “She was acting calm. And she’s not a great actress. I had plenty of time to study her. Eyes bulging like she was being choked. Bit of a shake not quite under control. She wasn’t like that the first time we met, when it had just happened, the fire next door I mean, when she had more cause to have the jitters. Every time I looked away, I expected her to knock my head off with this bloody great frying pan she keeps hanging near the kettle. Or break my nose with the biscuit tin.

  “Yet she was too afraid to be her usual, upright self. Didn’t even mutter when I trotted out that nonsense about having lost the samples. Wouldn’t let me take the husband’s but she had good reason not to and I wouldn’t have done it anyway. Then I suggested she let me talk to Jeremy alone. She shouted me down. Got polite again quite quickly. But I really jabbed a nerve.

  “Then she let me take a statement from her. In fact, she relaxed, came right down from off the ceiling when the spotlight was fully on her.”

  “Good statement?” asked Harkness.

  “Yes. Very. Too good. Not that she had a lot to say. But it was word for word identical to what she gave me in the car that night. It felt rehearsed. Or maybe I’m just cynical. But most people’s memories start to crinkle around the edges hours after witnessing something, never mind days or weeks later. And it wasn’t just the facts she was good on. I swear she used exactly the same words.

  “Anyway, I got your samples. DNA in the freezer. Where it’ll stay ‘cause there’s nothing from the scene to compare it to. Fingerprints have gone to HQ. As for the VWI, shall I stick the paperwork in?”

  “Yes, get it jacked up and let’s get Jeremy on tape. And keep hassling HQ for fingerprint results. What do you think then?”

  “Marjorie knows something and doesn’t want to say. She’s frightened. Could be she saw something or someone and has been scared into silence. Could be she’s been naughty herself. I just don’t know. Jeremy knows something too and hasn’t been allowed to talk. What’s your news?”

  “What did you make of the landlord at the Friars’ Vaults?”

  “Interesting tangent you’re taking. Ok. He was friendly. Honest when it suits him. Which is probably at least half of the time. May be some low-level dealing going on under his nose. He doesn’t want to know or doesn’t care. I don’t think he lied to me about anything, at least not anything important.”

  “Are you convinced the burglary there had anything to do with the fire?”

  Slowey pursed his lips. “Not one hundred percent. But maybe we’ve taken the wrong tack. I mean, I just don’t see it being worthwhile for Firth to break in there.”

  “And Murphy couldn’t have done.”

  “Exactly. So who else was in there and why wouldn’t they want us to see them, or what they’d been up to, a few hours after three deaths?”

  “Didn’t I read that both Braxtons, father and son, were there at the time? But we half knew that, with Keith Braxton making all that noise at the scene.”

  “You’re right. Both pub and initial crime scene have at least Keith Braxton in common.”

  “What about that DNA sample you gouged out of someone’s face when you took that beating in the pub car park? A beating, incidentally, at the hands of two reasonably fit white guys, one younger and leaner than the other.”

  “Good point. We need that pronto, don’t we? It’s just gone to the top of my ‘to do’ list. Anyway, what did Tommo say?”

  “Kevin Braxton appears to believe that Firth somehow ‘fucked up a business connection’. I’m quoting.”

  “Dumb bastard should have kept his mouth completely shut. Don’t suppose he could resist telling the cops he had ‘a business connection;’ big step up for him.”

  “Still think this was a solo effort by Firth?”

  “What makes you think I ever did?”

  Harkness flexed his hands impassively, their flesh scarlet but no longer iridescent, their facets and joints outlined in silver and red where dry skin stretched and split.

  “Still sore?” asked Slowey.

  “Less so by the day. Funny thing, pain. We’re all thinking beings. I know where it hurts and why. But if you let it in, it takes over. If the pain’s big enough, it gets in anyway. You either want to explode or fizzle out and die.”

  “Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine?”

  “I suppose the point I’m making a fist of getting to is…..well, with certain pain, not just the physical variety, you can start to understand how……”

  “Death can start to look appealing?”

  “Exactly. And not just your own. Back to the office for you, I suppose?”

  “Well with both you and Brennan piling on the jobs, I’ll be there past the kids’ bedtime and probably yours. Unless you’re finishing off Sharon’s statement tonight?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. Nothing in my job description says I have to set a good example to my underlings.”

  “Phone this guy.” Slowey proffered o
ne of his business cards with the name Brian Hoskins and a mobile number scrawled on the back. “An inmate wants to give a statement. About Murphy. I haven’t got time to do it. You’ll find it interesting and Brian won’t know and probably wouldn’t care that you’re off duty.”

  “You’re allocating work to your superior officer?”

  “You’ve passed an exam and glad-handed an interview panel. That makes you my boss, not my superior.”

  As the diesel rattle of Slowey’s pool car receded, Harkness studied the black-flies that had settled on his hands, letting them plot out a contour map of sensation for him. His own flesh deceived him. The rich and complex tangle of nerves underlying the fingers, palms and knuckles had been singed or numbed by swollen blood vessels and healing dermis. Across his fingertips, the minute bugs jabbed at him as if they were wearing crampons. In the flaking recesses of his palms, only his eyes told him the bugs were there at all.

  He seized the cordless phone from the garden table, allowing it to lie in his palm where he could barely feel it, hoping the numbness would infect the call he was about to make. A glance at his watch reassured him that Hayley couldn’t possibly be back from her meeting in London any time soon. He began to dial, caught himself, deleted the digits and swapped the cordless for his mobile. He couldn’t believe he’d nearly dialled Sharon’s number into the home phone and onto the phone bill that would drop through the door into Hayley’s hands. Did he want to get caught?

  He scrolled through the mobile’s address book, brought up ‘SJ Legal’ and thumbed the dial key harder than he needed to, eliciting the jab of pain he deserved.

  “Yes. Hello. Speak.” Sharon answered the unknown number in a suitably peremptory style.

  “It’s Rob.”

  A silence unfolded and he gave it room.

  “Rob. Hi. Sorry. I was immersed in something. You know, work stuff.”

  “I’m sorry. It can keep.”

  “No. No, it’s fine. I’m in the garden. Paperwork can wait. I’m glad you called. I almost called you.”

  “That’s good.” This was polite, civilised. No expectations. “I just wanted to say….”